Stargate Universe: "Justice" Review

Stargate Universe: "Justice" Review

Stargate Universe is going on one of those dreaded mid-season breaks, but before it went on hiatus, it left us with an episode that was fairly uninteresting until the end, where the cold conflict between Colonel Young and Dr. Rush escalated into something very hot. After a few episodes of questionable soap-opera style storylines, the series now has a great opportunity to turn things around.

This was, for the most part, another slow episode from this series, but it was not without some good moments. It started with Greer being used as a guinea pig/foodtaster. He tricks the others into the thinking their latest find on a planet is actually tasty rare bit of tomfoolery on Greer's part. He's usually pretty damn serious, and he quickly returns to that serious role. Things take a grim turn when Greer finds Spencer dead in his quarters. Was it suicide, or murder most foul? The process of solving that mystery starts with Colonel Young removing himself from it, a fair and noble gesture which further solidifies his role as the finest kind of leader. Or...is he? When a search party finds a gun in his quarters, he becomes suspect

It all leads to a trial aboard Destiny, and it ain't the most riveting thing in the world. But the whole ordeal does gives us a chance to watch the growing power struggle aboard the ship. Camile Wray becomes a driving force in the story and eventually gets control, which makes Rush happy because he gets his chance to poke around with the neural interface chair. It's a slowly paced story that might have even tempted a few viewers to change channels early on. When Camile mentioned communication stones and forensics experts from Earth, I cringed at the thought of yet another use of those damned stones. But the writers smartly avoided that cop out, and the final ten minutes of this episode made up for a lot. This is a game changer that will have a major impact on the rest of the series.